Paper Gardens
by ramoneslover
Summary: RPF. Ed/Leighton. She cuts a picture of him, framing his face and grabs her glue. She was never any good at gardening so she takes up scrapbooking. Makes a paper garden for him. WARNING – This is sad.


**Paper Gardens by Rena  
**PG-13 for language  
I don't own Gossip Girl, Ed or Leighton or anything else. This is just for fun.  
Pairing: Ed/Leighton (RPF)  
Preview: She cuts a picture of him, framing his face and grabs her glue. She was never any good at gardening so she takes up scrapbooking. Makes a paper garden for him. WARNING – This is sad.

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He was young, he was beautiful and he was perfect. These are the words she can think of when she sees him in her mind's eye. She may have never held him like a lover but she held him like much more.

"_Do you think he'd do that?" he asked her once. "Think she'd let him?"_

"_I don't know, what does he tell you?" she asked, he was usually not this very nervous._

She cuts a picture of him, framing his face and grabs her glue. She was never any good at gardening so she takes up scrapbooking. Makes a paper garden for him.

He was wild, brash and adventurous. Took large gulps of life and let them sink into his pale skin.

"_God, you're so white, Westwick," she tells him when they finally do their first bed scene together._

_He's shy now. "You're one to talk."_

He'd like tulips. Loads of tulips, strong and beautiful they are. She thinks he told her once but the memories sometimes fade and she wonders how much of it happened and how much of it she wishes happened.

He was strong yet sensitive and always hid a secret behind his devious smile. She smiles herself at the memory of his last smile. The last smile they shared. Eyes locked, because brown on brown is beautiful, because even then it's coordinated.

"_You look happy," he mentioned and his fingers brushed against her face._

"_I am happy," she responded and closed her eyes._

She should've kept them opened. Enjoyed that smile for a bit longer. She had a stack of magazines on their dining room table and sorted through them, cutting out smiling faces, cutting out all the male smiling faces. Trying to put him together again. Trying to find him once more amongst the old pages of periodicals.

She never does find him again and she succumbs to photos she's seen over and over again.

He was loyal, fierce and unpredictable. Like a wild wind or a stable tree. Things that make no sense, things that never shatter. She thinks if he's like the wind then he will one day make it back, she thinks if he's like a tree his roots run deep in her. Never to leave.

"_What are we doing?" he whispers against her mouth._

"_Let's think about it tomorrow," she urges because she's just that very needy. He agrees with a smirk._

There is no tomorrow in her equation. Someone, some person with a large eraser, took it all away. Whipped it away, never to return. She thinks and wonders how long will it take her to heal, when will she be whole once more? She wonders if she turns back the hands of time would she save herself from heart break? Could she? Would she want it?

He was poetic and soft and all that a rough man should not be yet… he was. And she thinks that if, for one moment, she could have acquired his 'I don't care' attitude she might've been happy. She might've been free.

"_Are you leaving so soon?" she asks from the bed and she wonders what she looks like in the morning light, missing all make-up and tangled in ruby sheets. He kisses her then, kisses her one last time. Tells her she's beautiful in the sunlight. _

"_I'll be back before you know it," he says and she thinks he has a wonderfully shaped back as he retreats. She spends the morning planning their next rendezvous and convincing herself she's not in love._

She now sits cutting out pictures of him, building him a paper garden where his happy smiles float and roam free. Her stomach shifts and she calms it with the palm of her right hand. Soothing it. Be calm, she tells it. We'll be ok, she tells it. We'll be fine.

She is young, brash, strong, loyal and soft. She will make it. She can nearly breathe without pain, just a subtle hurt that will always remain.

"_I'm boarding now, I'll see you in a few hours," he tells her over the phone._

_She smiles and he can't see her. She's excited. "I've got a surprise when you get here. A good one."_

"_Oh? Even more reason to hurry home to you." He says and she tingles. She thinks they finally got it right. Nearly five years in the making and it's finally right._

"_Ok… I love –"_

"_Don't tell me over the phone. Tell me when you see me." He says and she nods, jumping on the balls of her feet. _

"_Ok."_

She pauses at times because sorrow can last a lifetime if not tended correctly. If not plotted on fertile soil, if not gardened. She glues the very last paper flower and smiles, no more tears. She presses her finger softly against his smiling face.

He was young, he was beautiful and he was perfect. That's what the papers call him. A lost young talent. Like an immortal James Dean or Heath Ledger. Oh life can be both beautiful and cruel to those that love it.

"_Leighton! Leighton, how are you feeling? Is it true that you're pregnant?"_

_It's all she can see and hear as she's escorted by strong dark arms to her waiting car. The cameras flash in her face and she feel like she's breaking. She can't hear her heartbeat but she can hear the wind. Her dog whimpers in her lap and she hugs it to herself. _

"_Just breathe, honey, just breathe," someone tells her._

_She's quiet for some days. For some days. She finally turns and talks to someone. "Get me all the pictures of him you can find. I want hard copies." Her voice is strong though she feels she's gone. Just_ _gone._

They brought them to her in boxes. Boxes and boxes of them.

The first thing she does it separate the Chucks from the Eds. She can tell which is which with a flick of her wrist. When all the Chucks have been neatly placed in two boxes she smiles at them because Chuck is out there, somewhere, in love and happy with his Blair. It's the part of them that made it. The show ended and they were happy. It's a fairytale. A lovely story. She wishes them the best, they earned it.

She takes all the Eds, _her_ Ed, and she begins her journey.

The project has cost her many sleepless nights, many large paper cuts. As she pieces him back together she slowly heals and she thinks that maybe one day, while she watches over the garden she's created for him, he'll turn to her and smile.

She presses her palm against her swollen stomach and sighs. Time is catching up with her and time is almost here.

"_What's your favorite color?" he asked her once, a long time ago, before Chuck and Blair ever fell in love._

"_I don't now… blue? Maybe green." She said, laughing._

_He smiled. "You can tell a lot about a person by the color they love."_

"_Really?" she asks, not nearly as intrigued as she would be years later._

"_I wish you'd love green," he said._

"_Why?" she doesn't know if to smile or to look away._

"_Because I love green. Gardens have a lot of green in them. If I could live in one place, for the rest of my life it'd be a garden."_

_She stares at him and shakes her head smiling. "Note to self, build you a garden."_

She places the finishing touches on his paper garden, his image floats through the fake grass like his memory through her mind. She told herself once not to fall in love with him, that things like this never work out. She sighs and closes her book.

She just never listened and the child in her rumbles. It's moments like this that she's glad she's just a little bit too hard headed.

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The end


End file.
